Post Session: Quick Review

Riding high on the exit poll forecast that showed a stable government led by BJP coming to power at the Centre, Indian equity markets scored a hat-trick of record high level on Tuesday. The bulls which had been running on steroids for past few trading sessions went berserk after exit polls. The optimism came even as exit polls in previous elections proved to be unreliable.

Meanwhile, markets remained largely unscathed from dismal set of macro-economic data released after market hours on Monday, with Retail inflation soaring to three months high level at 8.59% in April, mainly driven on higher food prices and industrial output activity contracting by sixth time a year, though narrower than expected at 0.5% for March. Logging life time high levels, Sensex and Nifty ended past psychological 23,750 and 7,100 levels respectively, with massive gains of over 1.5%.

However, bit of profit-booking which took place in the second half of trade by some cautious  market-participants, who preferred playing safe ahead of the final results on May 16, dragging Sensex and Nifty from  their high level. Meanwhile, broader indices too participating into the rally went home with gains with similar magnitude.

On the global front, Asian markets mostly rose on Tuesday as tensions in Ukraine were eclipsed by a strong night on Wall Street. The Dow and S&P 500 hit record closing highs on Monday, as strong corporate results and an improving economic outlook spurred a broad rally on Wall Street. Additionally, strong results hoisted European shares to six-year high. The run of positive corporate news continued in Europe, with Germany's ThyssenKrupp raising its full-year earnings outlook on Tuesday, while aerospace group Airbus Group posted a narrower-than-expected drop in core earnings and reaffirmed its financial goals for the year.

Closer home, buying at Dalal Street was not only aggressive but also broad-based in nature, with no sectoral indices ending in negative territory except for healthcare counter, which for second consecutive session ended in red, with loss of close to half a percent. Nonetheless, notable gainers were stocks from Power, Consumer Durables and Oil & Gas counters which rallied in the range of 2-3%. Meanwhile, Oil marketing companies (OMCs) hogged limelight after these firms hiked the price of diesel by Rs 1.09 per litre. Although, banking stocks too witnessed gains, but Punjab National Bank (PNB) dipped over 4% after the state run bank reported a 28.69% decline in net profit at Rs 806.35 crore for the quarter ended March 31, mainly on account of higher provisioning for bad loans.  The market breadth on the BSE ended positive; advances and declining stocks were in a ratio of 1619: 1273, while 146 scrips remained unchanged. (Provisional)

The BSE Sensex soared 320.23 points or 1.36% to settle at 23871.23. The index touched a high and a low of 24068.94 and 23729.25 respectively. Among the 30-share Sensex, 23 stocks gained, while 7 stocks declined. (Provisional)

The broader indices too shut shop with massive gains; while BSE Mid cap index ended higher by 1.44%, Small cap index settled with gains of 1.71%.(Provisional)

On the BSE Sectoral front, Power up by 3.26%, Consumer Durables up by 2.92%, Oil & Gas up by 2.84% , IT up by 2.59%  and Capital Goods up by 2.51% were the gainers while, Health Care down by 0.92% was only the loser in the space. (Provisional)

The top gainers on the Sensex were BHEL up by 10.58%, Hero MotoCorp up by 5.88%, ONGC up by 3.66%, Tata Power up by 3.43% and Infosys up by 3.37% while, Dr Reddys Lab down by 4.20%, Hindalco Inds down by 1.05%, Tata Motors down by 1.02%, Sun Pharma down by 0.65% and HDFC Bank down by 0.63% were the top losers in the index (Provisional).

Meanwhile, India’s pharmaceutical exports grew by 10.5 percent to $1.26 billion in the month of April from a year earlier. The Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council (Pharmexcil) expects a healthy rate of growth in pharma exports at around 12 percent in current fiscal on the back of rising demand of drugs from African countries. The government has set pharma exports target for current fiscal at $25 billion.

In the previous fiscal, Indian pharma exports grew at a slowest pace in 15 years at 1.2 percent to $14.84 billion amid growing tension with the US over intellectual property rights (IPR) related issues. The previous slowest growth rate for domestic pharma exports was in FY10 at 5.9 percent. The US accounts for about 25 percent of India's pharma exports. Presently, US pharma industry is contending that India's IPR laws particularly with regard to pharma sector discriminate American firms and put pressure on the US government to take actions against India. Further, major domestic players such as Ranbaxy and Wockhardt are facing imports alerts on some major plants issued by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) in 2013.

Indian is the top exporters to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region countries. The prevailing political turmoil between Ukraine and Russia which has led to political and economic tensions in the Crimean region, has also hit the businesses of leading Indian pharmaceutical companies.

India VIX, a gauge for markets short term expectation lost 13.63% at 32.06 from its previous close of 37.10 on Monday. (Provisional)

The CNX Nifty gained 94.15 points or 1.34% to settle at 7,108.40. The index touched high and low of 7,172.35 and 7,067.15 respectively. Out of 50 stocks in Nifty, 39 stocks ended in the green and 10 in red while 1 stock remained unchanged.

The major gainers of the Nifty were BHEL up 10.37%, Hero Moto Co up by 6.02%, Ambuja Cement up by 4.89%, Bank Baroda up by 4.54% and DLF up by 4.24%.  The key losers were PNB down by 4.77%, DR Reddy down by 4.39%, Cairn down by 1.25%, Hindalco down by 1.12% and HDFC Bank down by 0.76%. (Provisional)

European markets were trading in green; France’s CAC 40 was up by 0.10%, UK’s FTSE 100 was up by 0.02% and Germany’s DAX was up by 0.54%.

The Asian markets concluded Tuesday’s trade mostly in green, tracking cues from Wall Street where the major averages ended on a strong note overnight. Malaysia and Singapore markets remained shut for the trade today on account of Wesak Day holiday. Shares in the Philippines and Indonesia rose to their highest in 11 months following other Asian markets as investors shrugged off tensions in Ukraine. Indonesia sold 10 trillion rupiah ($867.30 million) of conventional bonds at an auction, higher than an indicative target of 8 trillion rupiah. Japan’s M2 Money Stock fell to a seasonally adjusted 3.4%, from 3.6% in the preceding month whose figure was revised up from 3.5%.

China’s fiscal revenue climbed 9.2% year on year in April to reach 1.25 trillion yuan ($202.92 billion). The central government revenue reached 581.2 billion yuan, up 8.5% year on year, while local government revenue stood at 666.9 billion yuan, up 9.8% from the same period last year. Chinese Industrial Production fell to 8.7%, from 8.8% in the preceding month while Chinese Retail Sales fell to an annual rate of 11.9%, from 12.2% in the preceding month. Chinese Fixed Asset Investment fell to a seasonally adjusted 17.3%, from 17.6% in the preceding month.